Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Differences In The Diversity Of Frogspecies Between Sierra Lloronaand El Valle, Panama, Kei Okabe Thurber

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Panama is home to the greatest diversity of species in all of Central America. It is home to 174 species of frogs, 35 of which are endemic to Panama. Frogs are a vital part of many ecosystems. They maintain insect populations and act as food sources for larger predators. Their job of maintaining insect populations is essential to curbing the spread of diseases. Additionally, scientists have found chemical compounds in the skin of frogs that can be used to treat pain and prevent infections. The main threat to the majority of frogs is the deadly fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), or …

Avian Diversity Across Three Distinct Agricultural Landscapes In Guadalupe, Chiriquí Highlands, Panama, Jarred Jones

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Deforestation of tropical forest for agricultural purposes threatens habitat loss of native species. The value of various agricultural landscapes in conserving avian populations is useful in determining diversity-conscious development plans. However, generalized results from regionalscale studies cannot be implemented to insular avian habitats. This study serves as the only current avian diversity study of the Chiriquí Highlands. To determine the effect of agricultural land use within an insular avian habitat, I compared avian diversity and site population similarity in Guadalupe, Chiriquí Highlands of the Talamanca Range, Panama. I hypothesized that avian diversity is greatest at forest edge followed by forest …

Landings, Vol. 22, No. 12, Maine Lobstermen’S Community Alliance

Landings: News & Views from Maine's Lobstering Community

Landings content emphasizes science, history, resource sustainability, economic development, and human interest stories related to

Maine’s lobster industry. The newsletter emphasizes lobstering as a traditional, majority-European American lifeway with an economic and social heritage unique to the coast of Maine. The publication focuses how ongoing research to engage in sustainable, non-harmful, and non-wasteful commercial fishing practices benefit both the fishery and Maine's coastal legacy.

Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance (MLCA) started publication of Landings, a 24-page newsletter in January 2013 as the successor of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) Newsletter. As of 2022, the MLCA published over 6,500 copies of …

Managing Devil Facial Tumour Disease In Tasmanian Devils (Sarcophilus Harrisii): An Investigation Of Heat Shock Proteins As Potential Vaccine Adjuvants, Monika Payerhin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), is facing extinction from a deadly, highly communicable cancer that has already decimated over 85% of devil populations in the wild: devil facial tumour disease (DFTD). DFTD cells effectively evade recognition by the immune system, and every devil that contracts the disease dies from it. Many attempts have been made at developing a vaccine that could help save this now-threatened species. Heat shock proteins have been linked to enhanced immune recognition of pathogens, making them potential candidates for acting as adjuvants to such a vaccine against DFTD. In this study, …

Biomarkers Of Inflammation, Metabolism, And Oxidative Stress In Blood, Liver, And Milk Reveal A Better Immunometabolic Status In Peripartal Cows Supplemented With Smartamine M Or Metasmart, J. S. Osorio, E. Trevisi, P. Ji, J. K. Drackley, D. Luchini, G. Bertoni, J. J. Loor

Physiology Collection

The peripartal dairy cow experiences a state of reduced liver function coupled with increased inflammation and oxidative stress. This study evaluated the effect of supplementing basal diets with rumen-protected Met in the form of MetaSmart (MS) or Smartamine M (SM) (both from Adisseo Inc., Antony, France) during the peripartal period on blood and hepatic biomarkers of liver function, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Thirty-seven multiparous Holstein cows were fed the same basal diet from −50 to −21 d relative to expected calving [1.24 Mcal/kg of dry matter (DM); no Met supplementation]. From −21 d to calving, the cows received diets …

New Study Of Altitude And Butterfly Diversity Evaluation Of Butterfly Diversity In La Hesperia And Influence Of Altitude On Diversity, Savannah Artusi

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Due to the increasing effects of climate change, studies focusing on bioindicator species are becoming more necessary than ever. Additionally, knowledge about global biodiversity can be very useful to conservation organizations because it helps them determine what areas need to be conserved the most .Butterflies are useful as bioindicators due to their complex life cycles, importance in the food chain, and sensitivity to environmental changes. This project focused on studying the overall biodiversity of butterflies in the La Hesperia reserve. In addition, this study aimed to determine how butterfly diversity varies at different altitudes. To do this, the reserve was …

Examining Predation As A Possible Means Of Controlling Crown-Of- Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster Planci) Outbreaks On Reefs Around Lizard Island, Australia, Amanda Chan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Since the world’s coral reefs are currently threatened by a variety of different natural and anthropogenic factors, research on protecting coral reefs is pivotal to protect these diverse ecosystems. However, only Indo-Pacific reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef are dying due to a corallivorous echinoderm threat known as the Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster planci). A. planci is a starfish which feeds on coral tissue and can quickly reduce coral cover on a reef during an outbreak. Although scientists are still unsure as to what causes these outbreaks, one suggestion is the predator-removal theory. The predator removal-theory states that major predators …

Index-Based Insurance And Risk Management Among Nomadic Mongolian Herders , Kelsey Larson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Mongolian herders must contend with the risk of dzuds, harsh winters that can kill large numbers of livestock. To do so, they use a mixture of formal financial tools and traditional risk mitigation techniques. This paper is a study of the interaction between the Mongolian Index-based Livestock Insurance Program and traditional informal risk mitigation techniques. The researcher interviews herders in Bulgan soum, Arhangai aimag and Galuut soum, Bayanhongor aimag to compare the IBLI program’s impact in a community that has had IBLI since 2006 and one that only received IBLI in 2012. This study finds that insurance purchase is positively …

New Observations Of The Andean Ibis (Theristicus Branickii, Threskiornithidae): Distribution, Movements, And Behavior Near Volcán Antisana, Benjamin West

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Andean Ibis (Theristicus branickii) of the highland grasslands of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia is listed globally as Near Threatened and Critically Endangered in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian population is estimated at 100 individuals and is restricted to the vicinities of Volcán Antisana and Volcán Cotopaxi. Knowledge of the nesting biology of the Andean Ibis in Ecuador consists of a single filming in 1989. Much of its general ecology and movements is also unknown. The purpose of this study was to find evidence of nesting ibis in Ecuador while also collecting data on behavior, population, movements and interspecific interactions. Data was …

Shark Bay Prawn Managed Fishery Harvest Strategy : 2014 – 2019 : Version 1.0, Department Of Fisheries

Fisheries management papers

No abstract provided.

Shark Bay Prawn Managed Fishery : Bycatch Action Plan : 2014 – 2019 : Version 1.0, Department Of Fisheries

Fisheries management papers

No abstract provided.

Landings, Vol. 22, No. 11, Maine Lobstermen’S Community Alliance

Landings: News & Views from Maine's Lobstering Community

Landings content emphasizes science, history, resource sustainability, economic development, and human interest stories related to

Maine’s lobster industry. The newsletter emphasizes lobstering as a traditional, majority-European American lifeway with an economic and social heritage unique to the coast of Maine. The publication focuses how ongoing research to engage in sustainable, non-harmful, and non-wasteful commercial fishing practices benefit both the fishery and Maine's coastal legacy.

Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance (MLCA) started publication of Landings, a 24-page newsletter in January 2013 as the successor of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) Newsletter. As of 2022, the MLCA published over 6,500 copies of …

Restoration Of Bison (Bison Bison) To Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, A Feasibility Study, Daniel S. Licht

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is a 3,057-acre park located in western Nebraska. The unit is comprised of northern mixed-grass prairie vegetation, typical of the Northern Great Plains. Weather, fire, and grazing are generally considered to be the ecological drivers of prairie ecosystems and critical for prairie health. However, grazing has essentially been absent since the 1960s. In 2014, a Department of the Interior report explicitly listed the park as a high priority for bison restoration. This report evaluates the feasibility, management options, benefits, and challenges of restoring bison to Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.

A potential bison …

Arkansas Animal Science Department Report 2014, David L. Kreider, Paul Beck

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Series

No abstract provided.

Fish Cognition, Redouan Bshary, Culum Brown

Social Cognition Collection

No abstract provided.

Genetics Of The Pig Tapeworm In Madagascar Reveal A History Of Human Dispersal And Colonization, Tetsuya Yanagida, Jean-François Carod, Yasuhito Sako, Minoru Nakao, Eric P. Hoberg, Akira Ito

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

An intricate history of human dispersal and geographic colonization has strongly affected the distribution of human pathogens. The pig tapeworm Taenia solium occurs throughout the world as the causative agent of cysticercosis, one of the most serious neglected tropical diseases. Discrete genetic lineages of T. solium in Asia and Africa/Latin America are geographically disjunct; only in Madagascar are they sympatric. Linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence has indicated that the people in Madagascar have mixed ancestry from Island Southeast Asia and East Africa. Hence, anthropogenic introduction of the tapeworm from Southeast Asia and Africa had been postulated. This study shows that …

Dangerous Mating Systems: Signal Complexity, Signal Content And Neural Capacity In Spiders, Marie E. Herberstein, Anne E. Wignall, Eileen Hebets, Jutta M. Schneider

Eileen Hebets Publications

Spiders are highly efficient predators in possession of exquisite sensory capacities for ambushing prey, combined with machinery for launching rapid and determined attacks. As a consequence, any sexually motivated approach carries a risk of ending up as prey rather than as a mate. Sexual selection has shaped courtship to effectively communicate the presence, identity, motivation and/or quality of potential mates, which help ameliorate these risks. Spiders communicate this information via several sensory channels, including mechanical (e.g. vibrational), visual and/or chemical, with examples of multimodal signaling beginning to emerge in the literature. The diverse environments that spiders inhabit have further shaped …

Landings, Vol. 22, No. 10, Maine Lobstermen’S Community Alliance

Landings: News & Views from Maine's Lobstering Community

Landings content emphasizes science, history, resource sustainability, economic development, and human interest stories related to

Maine’s lobster industry. The newsletter emphasizes lobstering as a traditional, majority-European American lifeway with an economic and social heritage unique to the coast of Maine. The publication focuses how ongoing research to engage in sustainable, non-harmful, and non-wasteful commercial fishing practices benefit both the fishery and Maine's coastal legacy.

Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance (MLCA) started publication of Landings, a 24-page newsletter in January 2013 as the successor of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) Newsletter. As of 2022, the MLCA published over 6,500 copies of …

Economic Contribution Of Agriculture And Food To Arkansas' Gross Domestic Product 1997-2012, Leah English, Jennie Popp, Wayne Miller

Research Reports and Research Bulletins

Agricultural production, processing, and retail industries are major contributors to the Arkansas economy in terms of GDP. Agriculture contributes to the economy through direct agricultural production, value-added processing, and agricultural retail activities, and it also plays an important role through its interactions with other sectors. The use of non-agricultural goods and services as inputs into the agricultural sector promotes diversified growth in Arkansas’ economy; thus agriculture remains a vital part of Arkansas’ economy. This report: 1) compares the relative size of the Agriculture and Food Sector in Arkansas with those of neighboring states, the Southeastern region of the United States, …

Canine Sense And Sensibility: Tipping Points And Response Latency Variability As An Optimism Index In A Canine Judgement Bias Assessment, Melissa J. Starling, Nicholas Branson, Denis Cody, Timothy R. Starling, Paul D. Mcgreevy

Cognitive Ethology Collection

Recent advances in animal welfare science used judgement bias, a type of cognitive bias, as a means to objectively measure an animal's affective state. It is postulated that animals showing heightened expectation of positive outcomes may be categorised optimistic, while those showing heightened expectations of negative outcomes may be considered pessimistic. This study pioneers the use of a portable, automated apparatus to train and test the judgement bias of dogs. Dogs were trained in a discrimination task in which they learned to touch a target after a tone associated with a lactose-free milk reward and abstain from touching the target …

Park Rangers' Behaviors And Their Effects On Tourists And Tibetan Macaques (Macaca Thibetana) At Mt. Huangshan, China, Rie Usui, Lori K. Sheeran, Jin-Hua Li, Lixing Sun, Xi Wang, Alexander J. Pritchard, Alexander S. Duvall-Lash, R. Steven Wagner

Biology Faculty Scholarship

Previous studies have reported the negative impacts of tourism on nonhuman primates (NHPs) and tourists and advocated the improvement of tourism management, yet what constitutes good quality management remains unclear. We explored whether rates of macaque aggression and self-directed behaviors (SDBs) differed under the supervision of two park ranger teams at the Valley of the Wild Monkeys (VWM) in Mt. Huangshan, Anhui Province, China. The two ranger teams provisioned and managed a group of macaques on an alternating monthly basis. Monkey, tourist and ranger behaviors were collected from August 16–September 30, 2012. Macaque aggression and SDB rates did not differ …

Laterality Influences Cognitive Performance In Rainbowfish Melanotaenia Duboulayi, Anne-Laurence Bibost, Culum Brown

Sentience Collection

Cerebral lateralization has been suggested to convey a selective advantage to individuals by enhancing their cognitive abilities. Few, however, have explicitly compared the cognitive ability of animals with strongly contrasting laterality. Here, we examined the influence of laterality on learning performance in the crimson spotted rainbowfish, Melanotaenia duboulayi, using a classical conditioning paradigm. We also compared the learning ability of wild caught and captive-reared fish to examine the influence of rearing environment on cognitive performance. Laterality was established by observing which eye fish preferred to use while viewing their mirror image. Subjects were then conditioned to associate the appearance of …

Emotional Engagements Predict And Enhance Social Cognition In Young Chimpanzees, Kim A. Bard, Roger Bakeman, Sarah T. Boysen, David A. Leavens

Sentience Collection

Social cognition in infancy is evident in coordinated triadic engagements, that is, infants attending jointly with social partners and objects. Current evolutionary theories of primate social cognition tend to highlight species differences in cognition based on human-unique cooperative motives. We consider a developmental model in which engagement experiences produce differential outcomes. We conducted a 10-year-long study in which two groups of laboratory-raised chimpanzee infants were given quantifiably different engagement experiences. Joint attention, cooperativeness, affect, and different levels of cognition were measured in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees, and compared to outcomes derived from a normative human database. We found that joint …

Behaviour Of Horses In A Judgment Bias Test Associated With Positive Or Negative Reinforcement, Sabrina Briefer Freymond, Elodie F. Briefer, Anja Zollinger, Yveline Gindrat-Von Allmen, Christa Wyss, Iris Bachmann

Ethology Collection

Moods can influence our judgment of ambiguous stimuli as positive or negative. Measuring judgment bias in animals is a promising method to objectively assess their emotional states. Our study aimed to develop a cognitive bias test in horses, in order to assess the effect of training using positive reinforcement (PR) or negative reinforcement (NR) on their emotional states. We trained 12 mares to discriminate between a rewarded and a non-rewarded location situated on each side of a paddock. The mares were then trained during five days to perform several exercises using PR (n = 6) for one group, and NR …

Landings, Vol. 22, No. 9, Maine Lobstermen’S Community Alliance

Landings: News & Views from Maine's Lobstering Community

Landings content emphasizes science, history, resource sustainability, economic development, and human interest stories related to

Maine’s lobster industry. The newsletter emphasizes lobstering as a traditional, majority-European American lifeway with an economic and social heritage unique to the coast of Maine. The publication focuses how ongoing research to engage in sustainable, non-harmful, and non-wasteful commercial fishing practices benefit both the fishery and Maine's coastal legacy.

Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance (MLCA) started publication of Landings, a 24-page newsletter in January 2013 as the successor of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) Newsletter. As of 2022, the MLCA published over 6,500 copies of …

A Comparison Of Spatial Learning And Memory Capabilities In Intertidal Gobies, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown

Sentience Collection

For the majority of animals, the ability to orient in familiar locations is a fundamental part of life, and spatial memory allows individuals to remember key locations such as food patches, shelter, mating sites or areas regularly occupied by predators. This study determined if gobies collected from rocky platforms and sandy beaches differ in their ability to learn and memorise the locations of tide pools in a simulated rocky intertidal zone. Intertidal rock pool gobies show acute homing abilities and, therefore, should be expected to display superior learning and memory capabilities. In contrast, it is unlikely that natural selection would …

Anthropomorphism, Anthropectomy, And The Null Hypothesis, Kristin Andrews, Brian Huss

Experimentation Collection

We examine the claim that the methodology of psychology leads to a bias in animal cognition research against attributing ‘‘anthropomorphic’’ properties to animals (Sober in Thinking with animals: new perspectives on anthropomorphism. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 85–99, 2005; de Waal in Philos Top 27:225–280, 1999). This charge is examined in light of a debate on the role of folk psychology between primatologists who emphasize similarities between humans and other apes, and those who emphasize differences. Weargue that while in practice there is sometimes bias, either in the formulation of the null hypothesis or in the preference of Type-II …

Economic Contribution Of The Agricultural Sector To The Arkansas Economy In 2012, Leah English, Jennie Popp, Wayne Miller

Research Reports and Research Bulletins

This report is the ninth in a series of reports examining agriculture’s economic contribution on the Arkansas economy. Utilizing data from the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), and IMPLAN Group, LLC , the economic contribution of agriculture on the Arkansas economy was estimated for the most recent year available, 2012.

Fisheries Licensing For The Future Workshop, Paul Anderson

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

We have 1) hosted the Licensing Workshop and 2) drafted a white paper report from that meeting as stated in the original proposal. Last year we asked for a no cost extension identifying additional outcomes given the political climate and need for organizing discussions among influential policymakers. We have convened a Working Group of these policymakers twice in the past 6 months and have still determined that while we have moved the licensing conversation to the fore, among these groups, licensing as an issue has not yet matured enough to support the release of a Licensing white paper.

Spatial Dynamics In Fisheries Stock Assessment, Yong Chen

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

Most fisheries stock assessments assume that the spatial distribution of fish and/or fishing effort is random (Hilborn and Walters 1992), even though this is rarely the case (Paloheimo and Dickie 1964, Caddy 1975, Hilborn and Walters 1992, Tilzey 1994, Hutchings 1996, Chen et al. 1998, Hart 2001). The target stock is often aggregated and the distribution of fishing effort reflects this spatial pattern, along with other factors such as management restrictions, distance to port, vessel size, and the experience and habits of individual fishers. This often results in high spatial variation in fishing effort and mortality.

Ignoring this spatial variation …